


Pendulum Reborn

by tatersalad5001



Series: Miracle Synchro Fusion [6]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V
Genre: Agender Riley, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Family, Friendship, Gen, Healing, Moving On, Post-Canon, Slice of Life, we use dub names here but only most of the time i apologize in advance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2019-05-22
Packaged: 2020-03-09 12:45:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18917290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tatersalad5001/pseuds/tatersalad5001
Summary: After the duel against Zarc was won, and Zarc was sealed away, everyone who helped to make it this far was taken back to Paradise. ...Almost everyone. A few people were missing: Alexis, Jack, Kite, Crow, Aster. But even people who weren’t from the Standard Dimension, like Sora and Shay, were there along with people who weren’t present for that last duel, like Yoko. Everyone was reunited. And the people who used to be pieces of Zarc and Ray were split apart again, freed to live their own lives, and no longer shackled to the wills of Ray and Zarc.It was nice, getting to live out the happy lives they'd been denied for so long. For some of them, this was their first chance at them. They could do anything they wanted. Other than school, which was unavoidable, anyway. And Yuya just wanted the life he had before this all started. Sure, he liked having Yuto, Yuri, and Yugo around the house, too, and now he'd never want to go back to them not being here. But he'd missed his mom's breakfast, the inspiration both his parents gave him every day to keep moving forward. He'd missed watching his dad's Entertainment Duels in person.He just wasn't sure what he should be doing with this second chance.





	Pendulum Reborn

**Author's Note:**

> yo! so, uh. arc v was good. the ending? the boys and girls are recombined into yuya and yuzu now and the rest are just gone? reira's a baby now? that was not my favorite. what if they all got to live the happy lives they deserve. that would be nice. so! what if we did that.
> 
> If you've read any other part of Miracle Synchro Fusion (like Bacon Saver or Return from the Different Dimension), then Pendulum Reborn takes place before all the other stories in the series at this point. If you haven't, that's fine, you don't have to and you should be fine without it. This AU will probably make a bit more sense though as long as you know: it's built around all the Yugioh series happening in the same universe and around the same location (the whole AU takes place after some of the series, before some others, and during even more still). One of the probably most relevant factors of that is that Action Duels happen in Vrains now.
> 
> Usually I like to stick with characters' dub names for Yugioh, especially with this series. But some of Arc V's dub names are kind of weird. So in Pendulum Reborn, most characters use dub names, while some of them actually use their sub names. That's just my preference on it. And it can probably get pretty confusing sometimes, I apologize in advance. So just so you know, for characters mentioned here: Yuzu, Serena, and Reiji are holding onto their sub names. As for dub names, Kurosaki Ruri = Lulu Obsidian, Kurosaki Shun = Shay Obsidian, Sawatari Shingo = Sylvio Sawatari, and Akaba Reira = Riley Akaba. That's the handy guide! And while we're on the subject, Reira/Riley doesn't know what a gender is and isn't interested in any of it, so any pronouns for Riley in this AU are fine but Pendulum Reborn's sticking with they/them.
> 
> part of this was a vent fic i never published of this au that i wrote back in early december so, uh....six months ago? and i had to edit quite a bit of it because grammar stuff did not match up with the rest of this so if something looks a bit wonky in part of this then that's probably why, and i probably missed something. sorry in advance!
> 
> Thanks for sticking around through all that text. There's a chance Pendulum Reborn might get more chapters later on, or if I write more Arc V stuff for this AU it might become a separate fic...we'll see. Don't plan on either of those being definite but I would like to write more Arc V stuff for this. We'll see how it goes, I guess! So, thanks for reading! I hope you enjoy!

“Mom, have you seen my duel disk?”

“You left it on the table again last night. You’d know where it is if you picked up after yourself, Yuya.”

After the four pieces of Zarc were reunited, there was one long, horrible moment where they all lost themselves and lost control to Zarc. Where the pieces seemed lost forever.

And then, Zarc was stopped once again, sealed away.

They didn’t know what would happen after he was stopped this time. Would Zarc be split back into four? Would the original dimension split back into four? Would they all return to the dimensions they came from, cut off once again? Would they remember any of this?

Riley refused to split Zarc again. Instead, they sealed Zarc into themself. As for the rest, it took time to figure out what happened. Time they now had.

“Mom, do you know where my homework is? I can’t find it anywhere.”

“Rin already called. You left it over there when you were working on it together. She’ll get it to you at school, Yugo.”

“Sweet, thanks.” Yugo grinned as he entered the kitchen. Yoko was cooking eggs; Yugo poured sausage onto a place and got it ready to cook as well. “I don’t know what I’d do without you and her. Forget knowing where my homework is, I wouldn’t be able to do any of it.”

“If you two were actually organized like me and Yuto, you wouldn’t have to rush so much in the morning, Bugle.” Yuri grinned at the toaster. He’d already been making toast in the kitchen for awhile.

“Bugle??” Yugo scowled in Yuri’s direction. “It’s Yugo!!”

“Ah, my mistake.” Yuri glanced over at a nearby bag of Bugles. “There is a bit of resemblance between them and your hair, but they’re a bit sharper than you. You’re more like a flattened crayon.”

“They’re also salty like you, you jerk.”

Yuri shrugged, looking pointedly at Yoko, who just sighed.

After the duel against Zarc was won, and Zarc was sealed away, everyone who helped to make it this far was taken back to Paradise. ...Almost everyone. A few people were missing: Alexis, Jack, Kite, Crow, Aster. But even people who weren’t from the Standard Dimension, like Sora and Shay, were there along with people who weren’t present for that last duel, like Yoko. Everyone was reunited. And the people who used to be pieces of Zarc and Ray were split apart again, freed to live their own lives, and no longer shackled to the wills of Ray and Zarc.

Paradise itself...wasn’t exactly the Paradise City they once knew, however.

This wasn’t the original dimension that the other four split from. This wasn’t the Standard Dimension, either. It was...some other dimension entirely. Paradise City wasn’t its own city, but part of a much larger one. The places they had visited in other dimensions were around, too. New Domino, which was now just Domino, Heartland, back to its former glory, and Duel Academy, an actual school for duelists that didn’t churn out child soldiers. It was like all the places they’d been to were connected now. Still existing, but no longer separate. That was nice. They could visit people who weren’t in Paradise much more easily now.

A lot of people decided to stay in Paradise, though.

Shay, Yuto, and Lulu didn’t have family waiting for them back in Heartland. Rin and Yugo didn’t have a home in Domino. Serena and Yuri refused to go back to Duel Academy for any amount of time. Skip quickly opened up his home to the girls and Shay, Yoko and Yusho soon doing the same for the rest of the boys. So now they weren’t dimensional counterparts, just...adoptive siblings. Not the easiest change at first. It was going to take some time to get used to.

“Thanks, Mom!” As Yuya ran into the kitchen, he grabbed his duel disk from the table. “Yuto’s getting the last shower, but he should be almost done.”

“You’re welcome,” Yoko replied. “But no logging into Vrains after school until all you homework’s done.”

...Right. That was the biggest change about this different Paradise they lived in.

Solid Vision with Mass didn’t exist here. Even with so many things that stayed the same. Reiji still had LDS, Yusho and Skip still had the You Show Duel School, their homes were still here, but Solid Vision with Mass was gone. There was regular Solid Vision with holograms, but they couldn’t generate Action Fields or have Action Duels. Yuya still forgot often, still instinctively tried to activate the Crossover Action Field from his Duel Disk when that wouldn’t work here. There were still professional duelists here who were very popular, Yusho being among them. But they didn’t duel in Action Duels. They weren’t Entertainment Duelists.

It took too long to realize that Action Duels still existed here, but they couldn’t happen in the real world. It was Reiji who found out about the virtual reality dueling world known as Link Vrains. It was based and supported in the part of the city known as Den, no one could access it outside the area. But among its other quirks that separated it from the other big virtual dueling world, known as Duel Links, Link Vrains supported Action Duels. And because it had Action Duels, along with other factors, Entertainment Duelists here dueled and became popular in Vrains rather than the real world. Yusho was one of those Entertainment Duelists as well.

Yuya was an Entertainment Duelist, too.

Once breakfast was prepared and everyone was sitting at the table, Yoko asked, "What are you all doing after school?"

"Logging into Vrains. ...Aaaaafter all my homework's done," Yuya added after receiving a glare from his mom.

"I'll likely be heading over to Dennis and Sora's apartment," Yuri reported. "We still have that ridiculous group project with Sylvio to work on."

"Rin's still making sure I do all my homework right until I get my grades up. That'll probably eat up the rest of the day." Yugo sighed.

"If I don't have to read too much of that book for class today, then Shay, Lulu, and I are probably going to hang out in Heartland for a little while," Yuto said.

It was nice, getting to live out the happy lives they'd been denied for so long. For some of them, this was their first chance at them. They could do anything they wanted. Other than school, which was unavoidable, anyway. And Yuya just wanted the life he had before this all started. Sure, he liked having Yuto, Yuri, and Yugo around the house, too, and now he'd never want to go back to them not being here. But he'd missed his mom's breakfast, the inspiration both his parents gave him every day to keep moving forward. He'd missed watching his dad's Entertainment Duels in person. And, Yuya was an Entertainment Duelist, too.

Or, in the old Paradise City, he used to be. And when conflict stirred up he stubbornly clung to his style of dueling, refused to stop trying to make everyone smile.

He wasn't sure if that's what he should be doing with this second chance, though.

* * *

The sun flared high in the sky.

Yuya, laying in the grass, had never felt lower.

He was supposed to be somewhere right now, but he wasn't concerned about that at the moment. The jacket that usually hung over his shoulders had been left home, and though the sun was unobstructed and the air was warm enough that Yuya still felt like he was overheated, he missed the comfort the long sleeves could've provided him.

His arms were stretched out at his sides. His pendulum necklace was weighing down his neck.

He just needed time to think, on his own.

He barely processed the sound of footsteps approaching him. People had filtered in and out around him for awhile now. Strangers, all of them. Of course they were strangers, this was... This wasn't the home he grew up in. He barely knew any of the people here, and people he should've known didn't recognize him. He barely processed the footsteps, something in the back of his mind assuming it was another stranger.

He was wrong.

"Yuya, what do you think you're doing out here?"

Taking a deep breath, Yuya sat himself up and turned his head to look at the voice. There was Serena, glaring down at him. He sent her an apologetic smile.

"I'm just thinking things over," he explained. He leaned back and shoved his hands against the ground, using his arms to keep himself upright. "This seemed like a good spot to do that, I guess."

Serena looked around, taking in the people around them, the distracting noise they were making. She looked down at Yuya again, an eyebrow raised.

"I mean, it's noisy," Yuya agreed with her silent accusation, even though he barely noticed it until she arrived. "But nobody knows me out here. I can let myself get lost in my own head."

Serena rolled her eyes. "Yuya, you're supposed to be at your dad's school right now." He winced. Yeah, that was right. "You didn't show up, and you didn't say anything to anyone. Not to your parents, not to Yuzu, not to Dennis or Sora or anyone else. They've been sending out messages like crazy trying to track you down. You're lucky I happened to run into you."

He winced again, but tries to hide it with another smile. "I didn't realize I was getting any messages." That was true; he hadn't registered that anyone was sending him any messages, though now that he was thinking about it, he thought he could vaguely remember feeling the vibration of his duel disk trying to alert him, unactivated and shoved under one of his legs for safekeeping. "I'm sorry I made you all worry, but it's okay. I just needed some time."

"Don't you pull that. Yuzu said you only pull disappearing acts like this and isolate yourself when something's bothering you. So, spill. What's going on with you?"

Yuya looks back up to the sky. There was barely a cloud in it, the sun was bright. It doesn't match up with the fog in his own head.

"This isn't the home we came from."

"Obviously. This world isn't split up into the four dimensions we came from, and it's not that original one, either. The dimensions rewove themselves together, or something, and--"

"It's not home, but it tried really hard to be. This place stitched in places for us to fit in, to go on living seamlessly. Homes to live in, schools we were already enrolled in. But, it's still not the same."

"...School at Duel Academy's out right now, but Yuri and I have spots in next year's freshmen classes, if we want to take them. The You Show Duel School was already standing when we got here. LDS is apparently standing like Reiji never left it. And...you've got the opportunity to work towards becoming a pro duelist."

Serena's voice grew quieter on that last sentence. Yuya continued staring up at the sky.

"I expected better of you, Yuya," she said, and he blinked, turning his head to look at her again. "Since when do you just give up like this? I didn't travel through dimensions working with someone who decides he's beat before he's even tried. Or, I didn't think I did."

"I'm not giving up," he protested.

She narrows her eyes at him.

"Aster Phoenix lives here. In this world." Frustration flared in Serena's face over this detour, and she opened her mouth, but Yuya shifted his balance to only one of his arms, holding up his other hand to stop her. She remained silent. "I found out about him by accident. I mean, I'd hoped all our allies were here, but he's the only one I've seen anything of. He's a pro here, has been for awhile now. And I guess he spent a year going to Duel Academy for some reason? But he's everywhere on the internet, easy to find contact information for. I tried to talk to him but never heard anything back. After what happened with him and my dad...I don't think he'd just ignore me. Serena, I don't think all our allies from before even _remember_ us, or what we did together."

"So...what?" Serena demanded.

"This is obviously Aster's home now," Yuya mused. "This is the only life he remembers, and he's successful here. This world belongs to people like him, not me. What right do I have to become a pro here, when it's not even my home? After I tried to take this away from everyone? After I tried to take everything away from everyone? I wanted to become an Entertainment Duelist, but my dueling's hurt a lot more people than it helped. My dueling brings about destruction. Maybe it's time for me to stop, and finally let everyone live the happy lives they deserve.

"Besides, you didn't know me before I unlocked Pendulum Summoning. But before then, I was kinda a lousy duelist. I only won about 50% of the time. Without my Pendulum Monsters, I never would've been good enough to become a pro. Maybe that would've been for the best."

"Who cares about what would've happened?" She sat down beside him, making direct eye contact. "It's not nearly as important as what did happen. You unlocked Pendulum Summoning. And it's a summoning method that still exists in this world. Yuri wouldn't be as good a duelist without Fusion Summoning, but you don't see him complaining. You can still use it. You're still a good duelist. And your Pendulums aren't the only reason why-- we all learned a lot along the way.

"It's not the world we're from, but we're here now. We fought hard for this, we all deserve to be here. you. It's not our home now, maybe, but we can make it our home. And even if we have our old memories, or if some of us don't, we can make new ones. We deserve happy lives after everything, yes, but that includes you as well.

"If you truly don't want to be a pro duelist, if there's something else you'd rather do instead, that's fine. But if the life of a pro is what you yearn for, then you chase it, Yuya. You deserve it, and you'll do well. Those are all things Zarc has done, not you. You're more than that. You've changed a lot of lives for the better," she finished. "Your dueling brings joy, not destruction. Your dueling brings smiles, not pain. And don't you forget that."

Yuya frowned. "...That's really what you think, huh."

"Before, you never gave up, even when it looked like we had no other option. But back then, you were always fighting for other people. You never gave up trying to help everyone else." She stood up, and held a hand out to him. "You should learn to care for yourself in the same way, fight for yourself as stubbornly as you fight for your friends."

He stared at her hand, then grabbed it, and pulled himself up to stand beside her. "Then I promise I won't just give up. We'll make this a home we can all be happy in."

* * *

“I could never get enough of seeing Heartland like this.”

The last time they saw Heartland, it was under attack, in ruins. Now, as Shay, Lulu, and Yuto walked around Heartland, it was restored to its former glory. Bright and cheerful, packed with happy people living the regular lives they deserved.

“It’s just the way I remember it.” Yuto watched one of the litterbots drive by and smiled.

“No,” Lulu corrected him. “It’s even better.”

Yuto couldn’t argue her on that point.

Heartland was safe now. But when he closed his eyes, his dreams sent him back to Duel Academy’s invasion, the destruction, the fear, the anger. He knew Shay and Lulu did, too. It was good for them to go out and see the real thing, be grounded in the present.

Yuto tried to drag himself here when he could. It helped him sleep better at night.

“You two spend too much time stuck in the past.” Lulu’s words ripped Yuto out of his thoughts. “What was the point of fighting for Heartland back if all we’re going to do is think about how it used to be?”

“You...might have a point there,” Shay admitted.

“Guilty as charged,” Yuto conceded with a smile. “It’s just, after the invasion... It’s hard to think about anything else.”

“Then don’t think so much. Come on.” Lulu grabbed Yuto and Shay each by the hand. “This used to be our home. Let’s act like it.”

She dragged them to some of their favorite places that were still around. Stores that offered a variety of things from clothes to books to cards. The old arcade was still gone, but in its place was a small shop where they each grabbed a snack. They met up with some old friends from the Resistance, though none of them had any idea yet what happened to Kite. Yuto’s favorite library was still standing, and he was able to grab a couple of books he’d been meaning to read for a long time.

“Oh.” As they left the library, Shay stopped to look at a flyer. “Looks like there’s going to be a dueling tournament in Heartland soon.”

“You should go for it,” Yuto responded. “You’re really good.”

Shay snorted. “Don’t sell yourself short, Yuto. All three of us are pretty good duelists by now. I think we should all go for it together.”

“In that case...” Lulu grinned. “Looks like two of us will be facing each other in the finals. No one else stands a chance.”

Yuto couldn’t forget the bad memories that brought him here. But he could still make new and better ones going forward.

* * *

“You did all those math problems without too much help this time.” Rin tilted her head to the side. “History shouldn’t be too bad.”

“Math makes more sense when they don’t hide it in word problems or try to make me solve fake problems,” Yugo whined. “I can solve things. Memorizing random facts about things that never happened for us is a lot harder. When will I ever need to remember when Seto Kaiba was born??”

“We still need to learn this.” Rin tapped a pen against the page Yugo’s textbook was open to. “A lot of this never happened in our dimension, but it happened in this one. Like it or not, we live here now. So we need to learn everything about it, including their history.”

Sometimes, Rin was kind of amazing. Sometimes, she was kind of annoying. Usually, she was more of the former than the latter, but sometimes she was kind of both, too.

Yugo and Rin both grew up on the streets. Neither of them had a home, and they never had an education, either. That was life in the Satellite, you were lucky to survive, let alone learn anything. School was one of the things they dreamed about, like food and turbo dueling. Now, they had it. They got to actually go to school.

Rin was doing everything she could to not just succeed but excel. She wanted to learn everything she could. Not just for the sake of learning, but to prove that Neo Domino City was wrong about the Satellite. Maybe she didn’t have anyone to prove it to but herself at this point, but she never gave up, and she really was doing well. Yugo couldn’t help but admire her a lot for that.

As for Yugo himself, he was struggling. So much of what he was supposed to know seemed pointless, and he knew that in a year he was going to forget it all anyway. School didn’t really live up to the hype, in his opinion. As it turned out, some things he just wasn’t that good at memorizing. He was alright at math, or some of it, anyway. He was good at memorizing the effects of his cards. But useless random facts about someone else’s past was a lot harder to remember.

...The Satellite really had nothing in terms of education. They were both still learning to read and write, too.

“I still don’t see why I should try to remember this guy’s birthday. It’s not like I’ll need to send him a present or anything.”

“Sometimes you’re so hopeless, but you have a point. Just try to remember for the project. The rest of this,” Rin tapped the page once again, “is the real important stuff.”

“It’s just...so hard to care about some guy I never even heard of until we got here.” Yugo sighed. “And if I don’t care, I’m never gonna remember.”

“Oh, are you guys working on that history project?” Yuzu walked into the kitchen where they were working. As she spoke, she dried her hair off with a towel. She’d just came back from running not long ago, and had been taking a shower to cool off.

“Yup. Trying to, anyway,” Rin replied. “Yugo has to present on Seto Kaiba for class.”

“Really?” Yuzu smiled. “You’re lucky, being able to present on a guy like that.”

“Lucky? What do you mean?” Yugo asked.

“I figured you’d be excited to present on a guy like him,” Yuzu answered. “He and his brother were orphans. From nothing, he’s pulled himself to become one of the most successful duelists in Domino. He’s kind of like Domino’s Jack Atlas, but he runs one of the biggest companies in the city, too. And he’s still in high school, so he must be around our age.”

“Wow.” Yugo glanced over at Rin. “He’s kind of like us.”

“If I end up anywhere near as successful as Seto Kaiba, I’ll be lucky,” Rin said. “He’s my goal, though.”

“That’s one of the coolest things about history.” Yuzu grinned. “It’s not just a bunch of random facts. It’s all a continuing story. And we can learn from it. Learn from people’s successes about what to do, and learn about past mistakes so we don’t repeat them.”

Learn from the past? Yugo knew his own past, at least. He had a pretty long history of getting into things without thinking. He never used his head and it caused him his fair share of problems. It’s how he and Rin got separated.

Maybe he should try learning from that, at least.

“Okay, so when was this Kaiba guy’s birthday again?”

* * *

Yuri stopped in front of the door to the apartment, reached up, and knocked.

A couple of minutes later, the door opened.

"You're early." Sora stared up at him. "Dennis and Sylvio aren't here yet."

"I try to make it a habit to show up early rather than late." Yuri pushed past Sora into the apartment. "You can learn a lot just knowing the territory, observing the people. There's a lot more to gain being early."

"We're not fighting a war anymore, you know," Sora muttered. "But sure, make yourself at home. You might as well move in at this point."

Wasn't living just fighting a different kind of war?

Yuri snagged a container of diced pears and a fork and sat himself in a down to eat his snack. Sora closed the door and followed him with a sigh.

Many of the people who had come with them after the failure of the Arc V Project had families with them, or made their own. Yuri himself had been immediately taken prisoner by Yuya and his family, claiming himself for theirs. For Sora and Dennis, they weren’t connected to anyone the same way Yuri was to Yuya, or Serena to Yuzu. Neither of them were eager to intrude into anyone else’s home. So they became an unlikely pair of roommates in the apartment Yuri was sitting in now. The two never exactly spent a lot of time together before ending up here, but they had a lot in common. They made it work.

Whenever Yuri came over to visit, it certainly made things interesting, at least. Dennis was one of the closest allies Yuri had, so he was over often. He and Sora weren’t exactly close, however. Sora didn’t seem to know how to feel about Yuri, and Yuri did his best to enjoy it until they figured it out. Mostly, now, Sora kept threatening to make Yuri pay rent.

“Can I get you anything.” Sora glanced at Yuri’s cup of diced pears. “A drink, or a snack.”

“If you don’t mind, I could really go for one of those pear cups you keep around,” Yuri replied.

Sora stared at him.

“Oh, my, you already got one for me?” Yuri held up the snack in his hands with a smile. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

Sora rolled his eyes. “You’re welcome.”

It wasn’t long before Sylvio and Dennis arrived from school. The four of them were in a group together for a science project, and Dennis and Sora’s apartment made a convenient place to meet up and work. Dennis and Yuri sat themselves down on a couch, while Sora and Sylvio sat nearby in chairs. Dennis held a notebook in his hands, while Sylvio was flipping through a thick packet of paper.

“Our display board’s almost done, and we’re about to start on the paper,” Sora said. With a glance at Yuri, he added, “Thankfully, the experiment part of the project is done with.”

“And I’ve been making sure our plants are receiving the proper care they need,” Yuri assured them all. “Plenty of water, plenty of sunlight. They were innocent. They didn’t deserve for half of them to be ruined by orange juice.”

“I still don’t think you’ll be able to save the orange juice plants,” Sylvio told them. “They were in bad shape.”

Yuri sniffed. “A resilient soldier can pull through even in the most bleak of situations.”

Sora cleared his throat. “So, what part of the paper should we start with?”

“I think we should leave the abstract for last,” Dennis suggested. “It’s at the beginning, but summarizing a paper that has yet to be written would be like performing in a play without knowing your lines.”

“The hypothesis seems like the easiest and shortest part,” Sylvio added. He flipped towards the beginning of his packet. “We were comparing how plants grew when given water to being given orange juice, right? So we thought the control group would grow fine, and the experimental group wouldn’t grow as well. Something like that, anyway.”

Yuri reached into his backpack for a paper and a pen and began writing down notes.

“Results should probably be next. It’s fresh in our minds, and the results are also documented right there.” Sora pointed towards the notebook Dennis was holding. “So while we remember what we saw we can remember more easily what we recorded, too.”

“Obviously our hypothesis was correct.” Dennis flipped towards the back of the notebook. “Over a period of time we recorded the heights of the plants and observed how healthy they looked...”

One part of their formation was out of place. One of them obviously didn’t belong, throwing the whole thing off balance, weakening the rest. It was pretty clear to Yuri who that was.

Three of the four of them had been from the former Fusion Dimension. Three of them had been through Duel Academy’s strict curriculum, working together on the same side. Sylvio was from the former Standard Dimension, had had a more relaxed school life, had fought for the opposite side. Yet Sylvio seemed to slot in fine. He found roles for himself in the project well enough, bantered off of Sora and Dennis easily enough. He talked big of himself, but didn’t seem completely serious about it to Yuri. Sora wasn’t afraid to take him down a peg verbally, Dennis teased them both, but none of them seemed to carry hard feelings about any of it.

On a surface level, someone might say Sylvio was the odd one out of their group. But Yuri knew better. He was the weak link here.

He got along with Dennis the best of the group by far. He’d worked with Dennis far more than the other two before this cruel project. (Yuri was still bitter about what he’d helped do to those poor plants.) And he and Dennis were on good terms. But Sora obviously had mixed feelings about him. And Sylvio...

Sylvio looked at him and still saw that hateful piece of Zarc. Yuri could see it in his eyes when he looked at him. Zarc wasn’t here now, but that didn’t seem to matter.

Honestly, Yuri wasn't even sure if that made a difference. Without the anger and darkness that Zarc held onto fueling him, without Leo's Arc V Project pushing him to embrace that and enjoy carding the weak, without having a war to fight, Yuri wasn't sure who he was. What was left. Was he still the same person looking down on the weak and only caring for himself? Or, was he now soft like Zarc's other former pieces? He didn't know.

And until he knew, he had no idea how to act around all these people around him. Neither would they know what to do around him. Sylvio wasn't the only person tiptoeing around him like he was a ticking time bomb. Sora wasn't the only person who regarded his presence like an inconvenience. Dennis was one of an extremely small number of people who seem to hold any positive feelings towards him.

He glanced up briefly. Sora leaned over to take the notebook from Dennis before flipping to a specific page. Sora kept talking, looking down at the page as a reference. Yuri listened carefully, kept writing.

Yuri had no idea how to begin to answer any of these questions about himself.

* * *

"How's the wheat farm coming along?"

Yuya sat down in a chair next to Riley. As Yuya asked the question, Riley didn't stop pushing buttons on the controller he was holding, though Yuya knew they'd heard him and was processing the question. On the TV Riley was facing was Minecraft, Riley's survival world loaded up. Currently they had a chest open, and they were organizing its contents, most of it seeming to be extra blocks they weren't using at the moment.

"It's small right now," Riley answered after a few moments. "But it's going well. The wheat's growing. I can always expand it later, when I can deal with the cave it's next to more easily." Their hands froze briefly as they glanced over at him. "Reiji said you wanted to talk to me."

"Yeah, I do." Yuya sighed. As much as he needed to talk to Riley about this before doing anything else, it wasn't a conversation he was looking forward to having. He had no idea how Riley would feel about it. But he wasn't about to back down, either. Especially now. He owed Riley much more than that.

"Then talk."

"I've been going back and forth on it for awhile, but I think I'm going to make a new account for Link Vrains. Try to be an Entertainment Duelist, like I was before."

Riley smiled. "Good. I liked your duels. Everyone should get the chance to watch them."

"Before I do that, though, I wanted to ask you about something. And it's okay to say no. I'll drop it at that, and it won't hurt my feelings or anything." By now, Yuya knew that Riley wasn't going to say anything in response to that, just wait for him to keep going. If he were talking to Reiji, his response would be 'Get to the point'. Riley's silence would be trying to tell him the same message. So, Yuya barreled forward without hesitation. "I'm sure you know this as well as I do. Zarc wanted to be an Entertainment Duelist once. He wanted to make people smile. It was the audience's demands for violence and blood that corrupted him. He lost the chance to be the kind of duelist he really wanted to be. So, I was wondering if I could give him that chance again, in a way. Look like Zarc in Vrains, let Zarc be the Entertainment Duelist everyone's cheering for. If you both want that, anyway. If not, that's fine, too."

Riley tilted their head to the side. "You don't want to be yourself in Vrains?"

"I don't have a strong desire to be publicly known in the real world as an Entertainment Duelist, with all the publicity that comes with that." Yuya shrugged. "Not right now, anyway. Right now, not being able to escape all the attention from people I don't know doesn't seem very fun. I've had plenty of time being in the spotlight, recently, and I can always go public about who I am later."

Having Riley's support on this was important. Yuya used to be a part of Zarc, but now, Riley had sealed Zarc within themself. They lived with all the darkness, anger, and everything else that came with Zarc. Their opinion mattered. And, Zarc's opinion mattered, too. Zarc wasn't a wholly bad person either. He never was. There'd still been a part of Zarc that wanted to be a beloved Entertainment Duelist. Yuya was proof of that. That dream could still be honored, if Zarc wanted. Yuri, Yugo, and Yuto he knew were completely fine with it. But if Riley didn't want him to, he'd either just be himself in Vrains, or create an identity that wasn't Zarc.

"If you want that, then..." Riley nodded. "I think that would be nice."

"You do?"

"I think... I think it could be very healing. For both you four and Zarc. You can associate Zarc with something good, and maybe Zarc will remember more easily what entertainment and dueling are really for. And you'll be happier, and he'll be happier, too. Once Zarc's healed, I don't know if he'll want to work towards that old dream again. Maybe this'll be the best way for him to achieve it."

"If you want, when you're older, you can become Vrains' Zarc instead. You can take that account, and I can be something else," Yuya offered.

"I don't think so. That could change later on, though. It depends on Zarc, too." Riley paused their game. "If you still want to do this, I think there's something you should have."

They picked up their duel disk off of the ground. Four cards slid out from their deck. They pulled out the cards and held them out to Yuya. Yuya turned over the cards and sucked in a breath.

Supreme King Dragon Odd-Eyes. Supreme King Dragon Dark Rebellion. Supreme King Dragon Clear Wing. Supreme King Dragon Starving Venom.

"You performed alongside them, once," Riley said. "I can hear their voices. They would be happy to work with you again."

Holding them in his hand, Yuya could feel the emotion coming from them, too, though not very strongly. He could tell Odd-Eyes' feelings from his own deck as well. But he could also feel his own emotions. His hand shook slightly as he held the cards back out to Riley.

"I think their place is with you, now."


End file.
